Journal 8/3/09


Feeling very insecure about the fact that I am beginning to seriously pursue buying a home. I don’t know how P will take the news, if I end up buying. I definitely get the idea that this is going to be the magic time. I am considering parts of town that P would ignore or discount. I admit I’m looking with an eye towards value, what I want in a house, plus room for PJ, even though I know he won’t stay forever. What I want in a home isn’t very different than what I have. I just have to make sure I have enough wiggle room to be able to afford the place on my own without counting on another person’s income. Dad was right: make sure that I can maintain what I get.

So, how will this pan out with P? I know that I don’t have to worry about trying to convince her that now is the right time. Nor do I have to argue the merits of a location even though it isn’t in Denver. I can consider properties any place I’d like as long as I consider how far I will have to drive to get to work. P will learn about this when it happens. I may or may not give her as much notice as she gave me about her moving out. May just pack up her stuff and place it in a pre-paid storage unit for her to do with as she pleases. May take it with me as a show of good-will that I want her to join me. Regardless, I need to make sure that I finance enough to allow me to hire the movers that I need since I am sure that I will not be fully independent even with surgery. I know that I will need time to get myself into rehab and slowly increase my physical activities. And, lovely though they are, PJ’s friends can only go so far in helping me move. I can ask and see if Dorian will help me get a good deal on movers.

P will be angry, hurt, and defensive since I will have left her out of a key decision. My answer is that she’s not available, we are not together, and this is something that I wanted and, frankly, did not feel that I was going to achieve with her participation since she is so adamantly against moving. Why am I doing this? Because, as I said to Aunt B, I can’t just sit around and wait for her to return or not. I have very specific requirements for P to return. They include having a relationship with just P, not P and M. I might, and that is a big might, consider a 3-way with M coming to us or us together with M, but I just don’t see that happening. In many ways I think that something would develop with Linda M and I before something would develop with M and I. And, given that P has been vehement about the fact that she’s not giving up M, I don’t really see that P and I will reconcile. Stranger things have been known to happen so I can’t discount things; I just can’t place a lot of hope or plans on that possibility.
It seems that, upon learning that I purchased a home and am moving that P will interpret this as me moving on. I have to learn to be okay with that because, again, I just don’t see the value in waiting around for P to decide that she’s going to grace me with her presence. I say that with extreme cynicism since in many ways that is exactly what I think that she hopes I will do. While I have BPD, I also have years of DBT-style therapy and skills. I may not *like* living alone and may feel that I am not terribly efficient or effective at living alone, I *will* do so in order to maintain my sanity.

I certainly do not like my BPD-style behaviors and attitudes. I want a chance to be healthy. If that means that I have to embrace living alone, so be it. I freely admit that I love P and think that, when we are mentally healthy, that we are a very good and supportive couple. However, we have been neither good nor supportive for a long time. P looking outside of the relationship for comfort, companionship, and sex, is merely a symptom that our relationship had sunk to an all-time low. No, we are not nor have we ever been poly. We tried once to have an open relationship. It didn’t work; I came back to P with a great appreciation for her as a partner. We remained monogamous for over nine years. Although we’d like to say otherwise, we are not poly. And, it turns out that I place a great value on fidelity and monogamy. I just don’t see that we can stay together and be open. That can certainly change since so many other things are changing for me, but I suspect that I really am a vanilla girl at heart. I just like a bit of spice in my sex life. We will have to see what happens.